Lij Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and former editor of the Ghion Journal. He is currently the chair of Ethiopians for Constitutional Monarchy. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from...

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Bernie’s Tweets and Facebook Fascism: a War Against Speech and Free Thought

By Lij Teodrose Fikremariam on February 26, 2018

Check out the full write up that is found below this latest Ghion Cast that discusses the war that has been declared on free thought.

George Orwell once said “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”. As writers do, he was using flowery language to say what is becoming more evident as each day passes—we are living in an age of mass-deception. We have to navigate a most confounding maze where lies are accepted as truths and truths are rejected as lies. There is a reason for this, those in power know that if the people they lord over ever woke up to the reality of how we are being manipulated and toyed with, the reign of the status quo would end immediately. To forestall this day the 1% fears, we are continually being agitated and conditioned through corporate media and state propaganda.

Let me state the reason I write this article. Last evening, upon publishing my latest article about how a people threatened by bondage and despotism rose up and overthrew their oppressors through unity, I decided to pay for a Facebook ad so that the write up could garner a wider circulation. This article discussed the liberation of Haitian slaves and the triumph of Ethiopians against their would be colonizers without reverting to hateful rhetoric or the divisive conventions of “us versus them” that has become all too commonplace in our time.

A few hours after paying for an ad for the Greater than Wakandaarticle, I received an email from Facebook notifying me that my ad purchase was rejected because it did not meet their “community standard”. They did not cite what part of the article failed to meet their standards nor let me know the exact basis of their rejection, they just used a catch all phrase to refuse my purchase. This is the maliciousness of paternalism, Facebook is hiding their fascism by using a concern for the public good as a pretext to nullify free speech and stifle anyone who dares to go against corporate narratives.

I tabbed over to Facebook and scrolled through my newsfeed. The same corporation that rejected an article that spoke of humanity’s common bonds and our commonality of pains saw it perfectly acceptable to allow and promote some of the most vile, hateful and sexually demeaning posts. Facebook is proof that concentrated power and wealth truly inverts the human soul and breeds consolidated malfeasance. Founded on the promise of connecting people and spreading goodwill throughout the world, Facebook is now a harvester of humans; our data and our experiences being sold to the highest bidders. We are no longer users, we are all now products and assets on Facebook’s balance sheets.

This level of mendacity is not contained to just 1 Hacker Way in Melon Park, California. Twitter and Google are engaging in this same insidious form of corporate censorship; social media conglomerations only fought so hard against Net Neutrality because they wanted to keep the power to silence free speech for themselves. Just like Facebook uses “community standards” and their malevolent paternalism to diminish independent journalists, Google uses algorithms to derank non-corporate publications and demonetize non-affiliated voices on YouTube. The war against Fake News was really a war against the First Amendment and free press as a whole.

In developing nations, despots dictate what is acceptable news and legitimate journalism through coercion and AK47s. Well my fellow 1st world citizens, our governments are doing the same thing except they are conditioning us to be the coercers and bullets that snuff out free thought and our rights along with them. African tyrants and Asian strongmen can only dream about the amount of control that the political class in the District of Caligula have over us. We truly live in an Orwellian world where the lawless govern, the debauched preach morality and serpents pretend to be servants.

We are getting spun by spiders who weave a web of lies. Did you know that Bernie Sander’s main Twitter account is run by staffers? Part of the deals that Bernie made in his concession to the Democratic National Committee was to assist the Democratic party raise funds and help DNC endorsed candidates get elected. In other words, Bernie signed on the dotted line to become a sheep dog of the same criminal enterprise that rigged the primaries against him. Every day, an account that has 8,000,000 plus followers tweets out DNC propaganda as if they are coming from Bernie when all along staffers who are getting paid in part by the Democratic party are the ones who are injecting lies into the public square. The only disclaimer they make that the tweets are not coming from Bernie is a small mention on his Twitter profile—this is what passes for truth telling in America.

When will we realize that there are no heroes in politics; Bernie is not independent, he is part and parcel of the Democratic Party and to pretend otherwise is to rationalize away reality. Both parties play on our fears and feed us empty hopes only to wallop us with their malicious policies. If Bernie was truly an agent of change, he would have used the platform his voters gave him to fight to the end for real democracy. Instead he capitulated like the French at the Maginot line and can be currently found calling his voters Russian agents for having the temerity to say no to Hillary.

For the record, this article should not be taken as some type of victimization on my part. I’m not claiming that Facebook is intentionally targeting the Ghion Journal nor training their sights on me personally. Let’s be real, the Ghion Journal gets a thousand visitors a day, in the grand scale of the media landscape I’m a tick on an elephant. What I am asserting is that social media corporations and those entrusted with power are targeting unaffiliated voices as a whole because they fear the ticks will one day become dragon slayers. The establishment fears truth-tellers who have a chance of garnering a wide following—watch my interview below with Lee Camp on this subject.

We are not powerless in all this. Here is one thing that I know to be true, the ruling class should really be careful and read up on the history of the French Revolution, the Battle of Adwa, the Insurrection of Haiti and the Massacre at Timișoara. These are just a few of many instances where a people repressed with impunity had enough and took on their tormentors. Disinformation and pervasive lies will only work for so long before we wise up and rise up—a revelation will one day lead to a revolution. I pray for that day to never arrive, what I hope for is peace not uprisings that will lead to bloodshed and tears.

Let us free ourselves not through a big bang but through incremental actions. Instead of depending on corporate media, let us ween ourselves off their propaganda and depend more and more on people whose main motive is not increasing P/E ratios and realizing revenue growth. When it comes to social media, it is an imperative to decentralize power and migrate away from social media corporations. The Facebook exit day that I’m thus proposing is not a specific date but one that is based on the choices we make to neutralize the fascism of the corporate agenda. #FacebookExitDay

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell

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Check out the interview I had with Lee Camp on his show Redacted Tonight as we discussed the way independent media can succeed and I talk about the journey that led me to a new found perspective on justice and unity.

Check out the Ghion Cast where I discuss how humanity is being led astray because we keep entrusting the morally bankrupt with power.

Lij Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and former editor of the Ghion Journal. He is currently the chair of Ethiopians for Constitutional Monarchy. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from a life of upper-middle class privilege to a time spent with the huddled masses taught Teodrose a valuable lesson in the essence of togetherness and the need to speak against injustice.

Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II, Lij Teodrose is a former community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses. His writing defies conventional wisdom and challenges readers to look outside the constraints of labels and ideologies that serve to splinter the people. Lij Teodrose uses his pen to give a voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power.